


Stuck in Your Undertow

by triggerswaggiehavoc



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Lifeguards, Awkwardness, Fluff, M/M, Mild Language, Summer, Swimming Pools
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 10:33:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11057142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggerswaggiehavoc/pseuds/triggerswaggiehavoc
Summary: Something about summer puts funny thoughts in your head, and something about pools makes you drown in them. Joshua is not immune.





	Stuck in Your Undertow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seokkwan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seokkwan/gifts).



> hey! i'm sorry it's not that great but i hope u like it anyway... our dokyeom of perpetual sunshine deserves all the love the world has to give him

Lifeguarding at the pool has its perks. For one, it pays eleven bucks an hour, which is more than most of Joshua’s friends will be making over the summer, and for two, it’s not very strenuous work if you ignore the ungodly heat. In Joshua’s case, he actually doesn’t mind the heat much, especially since they get to take a dip in the pool on breaks and his mom bought him a little electric fan to keep up in the chair with him. Another good thing is that he can get some sun instead of fading to pallor over the break, since he’s always liked it better when his skin looks more like caramel and less like sugar. Of course, as with anything, there are some things about working here he’s not so fond of.

“Josh,” Wonwoo barks the second he arrives in the morning, flinging his drawstring bag into one of the employee lockers like he doesn’t care if whatever’s in there gets stolen and lit on fire today. “Switch teaching groups with me.” Joshua sighs through his nose. What a completely unsurprising request.

One of the least appealing parts of the job is having to teach kids how to swim, and while Joshua doesn’t think it’s tremendously terrible, Wonwoo hates it so much that he’s starting to. There are two age groups to teach, little kids under ten and big kids who are older, and Wonwoo almost always gets stuck with the ten and unders, which means he almost always demands Joshua switch with him. He would have no problem doing it if Wonwoo weren’t so abrasive about asking, but as things are, he refuses to ever be polite. Not that Joshua thinks Wonwoo is a complete asshole, but he’s definitely much more of a raincloud than a sunbeam, and Joshua always wonders why he chose to work at a pool in the first place.

“Why should I?” While he carefully tucks his own bag into a locker, he hears Wonwoo padding closer on sandaled feet, and when he turns his head to survey the change, Wonwoo is leaning up against the lockers on one shoulder and smiling a disgustingly smug smile that says he knows something Joshua probably doesn’t want him to know.

“Because I hate them,” he states simply, bouncing one knee, “and they love you.”

“Well,” Joshua starts, closing his locker with a careful click in stark contrast with the angry way Wonwoo always slams his, “what if I want to teach the older kids?”

“The older kids think I’m cool because I’m tall,” Wonwoo reasons, jabbing himself in the chest with a stiff thumb. “They love me. It’s a win for everyone if you just let me teach them and take the babies.”

“It’s not a win for everyone unless there’s something else in it for me,” Joshua informs him, and Wonwoo’s smug grin gets a little bit bigger and a whole lot smugger. 

“Interesting you should mention that,” he says, leaning in closer than Joshua would prefer to have him lean under usual circumstances. “Well, you know who else is working today? I’ll forego my own breaks so you can take yours with him.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Joshua tells him, and he tries to be cool about it, but he stumbles one too many times getting it out and some of the day’s premature heat puts a little healthy pink in his cheeks. Wonwoo laughs once, big and loud and scary enough to make the ten and under kids burst into tears, and claps a large hand on Joshua’s shoulder with stinging zeal.

“You’re way too sweet to lie,” he muses gleefully. “I’m teaching the big kids.” With no further words and absolutely no remorse, he heaves himself off the lockers and starts walking out to the concrete slab where the pool sits. Not one minute later, the loud bang of the door being kicked in announces the arrival of their fellow lifesaver.

“Good morning, funky bunch!” Seokmin yodels as he struts in, striking a pose in front of the entryway, leg fully extended while he squats low to the ground and crosses his arms in front of his chest. He holds it only for a moment before resuming a normal standing position. “I see Wonwoo didn’t bother to stick around to see my pose of the day today, either,” he drawls while he tucks his keys and wallet into his locker, voice dripping with mock despair. “That’s fine. I’m not hurt.”

“You’ve done that pose before anyway,” Joshua informs him. “He would’ve pointed that out.” The more likely situation is that Wonwoo wouldn’t even have noticed because he doesn’t pay enough attention, but Joshua is banking on Seokmin not realizing that. Fortunately, Seokmin turns to face him with a look that reeks of betrayal and not of dawning realization.

“Listen, Josh,” he begins, stoic, “not to be that guy, but do you have any idea how hard it is to come up with a different way to pose every single day I come in? I’m way overworked.” If he could hold his composure for just a second longer, he’d make a scarily good actor, but he pops into a glowing smile almost before the last word has left him, eyes crinkling into joyous crescents. Seokmin is definitely way more of a sunbeam than Wonwoo could ever hope to be.

“Morning, lovebirds,” Wonwoo calls from where he’s about to climb up onto his post, and Joshua almost has a heart attack before he realizes Seokmin is too distracted putting the noodles in color order to hear it. Wonwoo then laughs loud enough to grab his attention again, sneer just as evil as ever.

Either Wonwoo is far more perceptive than he needs to be or Joshua is nor nearly subtle enough, but it hadn’t taken long at all for Joshua to realize that Seokmin is handsome and nice and funny and a whole lot of other great adjectives, and it hadn’t taken too much longer for Wonwoo to realize Joshua had realized that. They only spent one painfully awkward week of Wonwoo raising his eyebrows a lot before Joshua decided he was too tired to deal with it anymore.

“Will you stop giving me that look?” he’d said when he arrived one morning to Wonwoo’s already smirking mug.

“Sure, when you stop having a fat crush on Seokmin,” Wonwoo’d told him, smug and grinning, then walked out the door as Seokmin sprinted in with frantic footsteps, voice near a scream.

“I heard my name!”

Nowadays, Wonwoo is just as annoying about it, but he also seems like he got the idea in his head somewhere along the line that he should play poolside cupid, so now he’s actively participating in and engineering schemes which will result in Joshua and Seokmin alone together in the same space. Little does he know, Joshua is not forward enough to do anything but laugh at Seokmin’s stupid jokes, and Seokmin is far too oblivious to do anything but make stupid jokes, so the entire effort is a waste as far as he’s concerned, and he really wishes Wonwoo would just give it up and leave him alone. He could only wish for that kind of luck. Wonwoo may not be a complete asshole, but he’s definitely a partial asshole at least.

“Planning on landing a kiss with the prince today, slugger?” he teases while they fetch the paddleboards for the swimming lesson, bony elbow knocking into Joshua’s ribs too hard to be chummy.

“Knock it off.”

“Seriously,” Wonwoo presses. “I have a good feeling in my gut for you about today. Don’t ruin my grand orchestration.”

“I’ll do whatever I want,” Joshua tells him, and Wonwoo cuts him off with another grating snicker.

“Josh, we both know you’re too nice to act like a hardass now.”

“You just think I’m that nice,” Joshua politely informs.

“No,” Wonwoo rebuts, “I know you’re genuinely that nice no matter how hard you try not to be.” The pat he administers to Joshua’s back is more condescending than anything else. “May as well just keep being nice. I’m sure Seokmin _loves_ nice guys.” Joshua groans. Wonwoo laughs again. A vicious cycle.

As expected, the kids ten and under are terrible. They never listen to anything anyone says, and half the time, Joshua thinks he may as well just give up and tell them to drown; for Wonwoo, that half the time is probably a lot more like all the time, which is why Joshua guesses he always refuses to teach them, but it’s still unfair that he always gets roped into doing it. So what if they get all giddy when they see him walking over? It’s less that they love him and more that he’s the only one who doesn’t yell. As he looks over from his rowdy bunch of 18 to the four calm kids Wonwoo has to teach, he boils with envy.

Once the swimming lesson is surmounted, the day is nothing more than sitting in really high chairs, sweating a lot, and making sure nobody drowns. From where he sits at his perch, little fan blowing at him with all its might, he can see Seokmin struggling to bat the heat away with his hands, sweat glistening on his neck and forehead like dew. Parts of Joshua feel guilty for having this little fan to aid him while Seokmin the earthbound angel is over there suffering, but those same parts of him are also too scared to risk heading over there to offer him the fan as comfort. Different parts of him refuse to budge because he can feel Wonwoo’s gaze on him and he doesn’t want to see any raised eyebrows to go along with it. The scream of the whistle tears him back to the present.

“Adult swim!” booms Wonwoo’s gravelly voice through the loudspeaker, a sign it’s time to go on break, and no sooner has he said it than Seokmin’s clambered down the ladder and slipped into the pool to cool off, fully submerging himself in the wake of the grumpy children being forced to evacuate. Joshua takes this as an opportunity to slip off his own post and meander into the lukewarm air conditioning of the tiny break room, white-hot concrete searing the soles of his feet through worn out sandals. The stale air inside sticks to him like a second skin from the moment he opens the door, intensifies the sliminess when he reapplies his sunscreen.

Not one full minute has passed before Seokmin is walking in behind him, shaking water out of his hair and pushing it back out of his eyes, sighing at the sweet relief the half-assed air conditioning is delivering. Joshua can’t help but eye his bronze skin with cheeks pinked by jealousy. He can’t remember a time he’s ever seen Seokmin put on sunscreen at all, and he wishes he could know what it’s like not to be deathly afraid of a sunburn.

“You okay?” Seokmin asks, and Jesus, when did he get that close? Joshua tastes his heart in his throat for a second. “You look a little red.”

“It’s just hot,” he excuses, even though he knows it was hotter yesterday and also the three days before that. Not quite wise, he thinks, to admit you were admiring his skin with envy. “And I don’t think I put on enough sunscreen earlier, so I might be getting a little burnt.”

“Yeah,” Seokmin hums, “you should be careful about that. It’ll really suck if you get a sunburn.” A hand comes to rest on Joshua’s shoulder, slender fingers and warm palm, and he jumps straight out of his skin. “Want me to get your back for you?”

“Huh?” he sputters, quickly chased by, “Uh, no thanks,” and, “I think I can get it.” To his great dismay, the hand at his shoulder does not move.

“Are you sure? It’s really hard to cover all of your back by yourself.” He pats Joshua’s shoulder three gentle times before at long last removing his hand, and in his relief, Joshua accidentally squeezes way too much sunscreen out onto his palms. “It’ll be a huge bummer if you get a sunburn.”

“It’s not that big a deal,” Joshua fibs through clenched teeth, pretending the thought of his back getting burned and forcing him to sleep on his stomach doesn’t keep him up at night. “I can take care of it.”

“So cold,” Seokmin whistles. “You would really be willing to get a terrible sunburn and have to miss work and abandon me here with Wonwoo.” His eyes dance with suppressed laughter, but his mouth curls into a disappointed frown. “Do I mean so little to you?”

Joshua is a weak man. Weak enough that he won’t even put up a fight right now, when he knows Seokmin is joking and would probably let him win without much hassle. Weak enough that he crumbles under that stupid false frown and hands over the bottle of sunscreen without another iota of protest. Weak enough that he even forgets to grab the bottle on his way and instead finds himself offering his hand for Seokmin to swipe some excess cream from. The blunder doesn’t sink in until he feels Seokmin’s fingertips brushing past his own, and then he blushes, first because he doesn’t think their hands have ever touched before, and hand touching is pretty close to handholding, which is a lot for him to deal with right now, and then because he just got all nervous about touching someone else’s hand, which is something he should’ve gotten over when he was about ten. Seokmin cups his other hand under Joshua’s knuckles to steady it while he takes some of the sunscreen, and Joshua tastes death like iron in his mouth.

Having someone who isn’t related to you apply sunscreen to your back is extremely uncomfortable and weirdly intimate, and Joshua learns this at warp speed when he feels Seokmin’s palms land on his back, scalding hot just like he expects them to be, fingers long and thin massaging sunblock into the skin. Regret is what’s choking Joshua while he silently applies sunscreen to his chest and arms, regret at things like getting this job last summer and staying on this summer and being born in the first place, and he’s hoping with everything he has that Seokmin will pick up on the heavy awkwardness in the air and wrap up soon. To his great misfortune, Seokmin is needlessly thorough about the application of sunscreen.

“Oh yeah,” he says, hands gliding up to coat the back of Joshua’s neck and sending a chill up his spine, “are you busy later?”

“Later?” Joshua chokes out, punching himself in the chest to get his heart calmed down after the jarring break from silence. “You mean, like, after work?”

“Yeah,” Seokmin answers, moving down to the shoulders, which is not at all better. “Do you have plans?”

“Well, I did have the plan of going home,” he confesses. He doesn’t really mean for it to be funny, and it really isn’t, but Seokmin laughs anyway, loud and full, ringing off the walls. The children sitting on the ground outside waiting for their turn to go back into the pool can probably hear him, and they probably also think that laughter is at their expense. “Why?”

“Oh, you know,” he hums, making his way down to Joshua’s lower back and setting his heartbeat to a very dangerous clip. “Just curious.” Of course, Joshua doesn’t know where to begin figuring out what to say to that, so he just stares at the locker in front of him for a long time.

“Okay,” he finally decides on, but only once an awkwardly long amount of time has passed after the last thing Seokmin said, one of those bizarre pauses where it’s too late to contribute to the previous topic and too soon to try to introduce a new one. If Joshua were alone right now, he’d slam his head into the locker without a second thought. Seokmin gives him one final pat before removing his hands completely and rubbing the unused surplus in on his neck.

“Well, before you leave tonight,” he says, “would you wait for me for a minute?”

“Why?” Instead of an answer, Seokmin just grins at him, a little bit brighter than the blazing sun outside, and that smile right now is more of a mystery than Joshua has ever considered it to be before. A brief flash passes through his eyes that feels like it might have held an answer, but Joshua’s slick hands aren’t quite quick enough to catch it.

“You’ll wait, right?” is all the response he gives, a single short question dangling on the air like sweat off the short hairs near Joshua’s neck. All he can bring himself to do is nod, and then Seokmin nods back with that beam still on his face, and then he hears the whistle’s screech from outside.

“Adult swim is over,” Wonwoo booms, muffled through the wall, and Joshua swears that was both the longest and shortest fifteen minutes of his life. He also swears he will never talk to Wonwoo again after today.

“Guess we better get back to rescuing precious children,” Seokmin coos, skipping back outside to assume his post, and Joshua thinks that’s definitely the best way to describe the job if Seokmin’s the one doing it.

The rest of the day is filled with high thermometers and awkward breaks, not one of which Wonwoo is willing to take. Joshua begs him to just take at least one, but he crows down from his perch every time that he vowed not to take even one and won’t have himself made into a dishonest man under any circumstance, so Joshua is forced to suffer through all the breaks with Seokmin alone. Not that being around Seokmin is suffering, but having feelings is suffering, and having a coworker who knows about those feelings and deliberately schemes to make you act on them is the pinnacle of suffering. Eleven dollars costs a lot more than Joshua had been expecting when he first got this job.

Sometime around five in the afternoon, when the sun has finally started to get noticeably lower, Soonyoung comes by, yodeling some obnoxious radio tune Joshua tries his best to tolerate and Wonwoo openly despises. Soonyoung stops by Seokmin’s ladder to whisper scream at him before disappearing for a minute and then coming back to stand under Wonwoo’s ladder and flirt with him. Joshua wishes their manager were here today to tell him to stop talking and pay attention to his job, but in another stroke of endless bad luck, she’s chosen this blessed day to be absent and leave them to their own devices, so all Joshua gets to do is watch them and seethe.

Eventually, Soonyoung goes on his merry way, and even more eventually, the pool closes for the day, sinking into the pressurized heat of the early evening darkness and gradually setting sun. The world around them fades into shades of navy and dusty blue while they shuffle the last few families out of the gates and get started cleaning up for the night, brooms grating against the concrete with a shuffle sound that’s always made Joshua’s skin crawl. As with most nights, he volunteers to mop the bathrooms just so he can escape it, even if it does mean drowning his nose in the stench of cleaner. By the time he’s reemerged, the sun has long set, though its impact still lingers hot on the air.

In typical fashion, Wonwoo is already long gone when Joshua fetches his belongings from where he’s stored them, one of those guys who leaves not one second later than he’s ticked off the final item on the very exact list of things he needs to do, which leaves Joshua alone with Seokmin once again. It feels like the millionth time today, and he’s two seconds from bolting straight home when he recalls he kind of not really promised Seokmin he would wait for him to be done with everything before leaving. With the sound of Seokmin singing while he sweeps as background music, Joshua meanders to the tiny parking lot out front and squats to sit on the concrete curb stop in front of where he parked.

Seokmin is humming when he moseys out a good ten minutes later, jingling the keys a few times before he locks the front gate. A plastic bag crinkles in the bend of his elbow, crunching against his hip while he walks, and he’s halfway across the lot before he spots Joshua under the hazy yellowed cast of the single light post. His smile brightens impossibly, outshines the glowing full moon, and he pads over to sit on the slab at Joshua’s side, knee and shoulder bumping together so gently Joshua isn’t sure his nerves are really processing it.

“Thanks for waiting,” Seokmin cheers, planting the plastic bag on the asphalt between his feet and letting the thinned handles fall flat on top. Joshua watches him, mesmerized, curious, just a little terrified to look at anything else but that bag.

“I did say I would,” he says, stiff, and Seokmin smiles and nods the same way he always does but quieter now, hushed under the buzzing glow of the dark and the shallow gray clouds rolling in to blur out the moon. For a drawn-out minute, there’s nothing but the frantic howling of cicadas and quietly held breaths. “What did you want me to wait for, again?” Joshua asks before his lungs have the chance to give out. Seokmin claps his hands and digs into his bag readily, sifting through whatever’s inside with quiet rustling.

“Blueberry or orange?” he asks while he rummages.

“Blueberry,” Joshua says without thinking. The question caught him off-guard, forced his lips into action before his brain could get the memo, and he’s still not sure he even wanted to say blueberry when Seokmin cracks into a broad grin and pulls out two ice cream bars, pushes the one in the baby blue packaging into Joshua’s clammy fingers. “What’s this for?”

“Eating,” he states, very obviously, then rips the plastic off his own to nibble at the top of it. As much as an annoying answer like that bugs Joshua normally, he finds himself not minding too much when it’s Seokmin. Such is young love, or at least budding crushes. “I had Soonyoung bring them up today and stick them in the freezer. How is it?”

“Good,” Joshua mutters, lips dyeing blue as he takes tiny bites from the tip of the frozen bar. Blueberry was a good choice. “Why’d you have him bring it?”

“Do you like ice cream?”

“Yeah.” Joshua curses himself internally for firing back an answer instead of telling him not to avoid the question, but Seokmin smiles nice and broad to pull him out of it, nods his head as he wears away the gradually melting bar of orange in his hand.

“I had a hunch you did,” he says brightly, head still bobbing, “so I asked him to bring some.” He takes a sizable bite that makes Joshua’s teeth hurt in sympathy. “It also gave him an excuse to come flirt with Wonwoo.”

“Since when has he needed an excuse?” Joshua snorts, and Seokmin laughs harder than he needs to, bouncing off the pavement and the metal cars and the thick humidity of the air before dying off in a faded echo. Once again, they’re left with nothing but cicadas.

Joshua wants to say something else, but his brain is too numb to conjure anything, so all he’s able to bring himself to do is sit tight and eat his ice cream and wonder what comes next, what happens once they’re done eating and there’s really nothing left but the cicadas and the shrouded moon. Do they just go home and forget about it without any concrete explanation? Is Joshua just doomed for life? At long last, Seokmin sighs and leans back a little, gazing up at the sky to find the moon where the clouds are clearest.

“Do you want to go see a movie?” he asks. Joshua chokes on his ice cream a little bit.

“Right now?”

“I guess right now works, if you want,” he ventures, scratching the back of his head, “but I was thinking maybe sometime soon when you’re free and we’re not both nasty after being at the pool all day.”

“You want to go see a movie with me?” Were the ice cream dripping onto his fingers not so absurdly cold, Joshua would be sure he’s smack in the middle of a fever dream. “Why?”

“Do you not want to?” Seokmin asks, and Joshua could scream. _That’s not what I meant and you know it_ , is what he would shout if he had the guts and the lungs for it.

“It’s not that,” comes his meek mumble instead, “but I just… You know. I don’t know why you’re asking me.”

“I think it would be fun,” he hums. “If you want to, that is.”

“I mean, sure,” he concedes. Beside him, Seokmin pumps his fist once. “Did you invite Wonwoo, too?”

“Who do I look like?” Seokmin gasps without hesitation, throwing a hand across his heart.  “Of course Wonwoo isn’t invited.” Joshua laughs, or tries to, but it’s a little too halfhearted due to the dawning realization that it would just be the two of them alone and the wide variety of things that might mean. He barely survived fifteen-minute breaks today. How is he going to make it through a movie?

“So,” his dumb mouth starts to say before he can put the brakes on, “is it like a, uh…” But he’s too chicken to say it. Nice going.

“A date,” Seokmin finishes for him. “If you want to go.”

“You’re really asking me out?” Joshua blurts, face tinting. His only regret is that they’re fully bathed under the streetlight, which means Seokmin can see exactly how red he is. He’s red, too, it seems.

“Why do you sound so outraged?” Seokmin hollers back.

“I’m just surprised!” Joshua defends.

“Well, why?”

“Because I don’t get why you would ask me out on a date!”

“Why do you think?” Seokmin cries, then buries his face in his palms. The clouds hiding the moon clear for a moment, bathe him in a soft white glow that he makes look more like the sun. “Sheesh. I got the ice cream and everything and I thought this would be _easy_ …”

“Uh, Seokmin, do you maybe…” Joshua gulps. His mental fortitude is waning. “Like me?” Seokmin groans.

“Yes,” he says with so little time to consider it that Joshua’s stomach jumps. “And Soonyoung told me Wonwoo told him that you like me, too, so I really thought this wasn’t gonna be as hard as it is.” Joshua has decided. Wonwoo is a complete asshole. So much for trusting in the goodness of your fellow man. “But it’s really not easy.” Suddenly, Seokmin tears his face free, stares dead at the post of the lamp before him. “Oh my god. Was it a prank? Did they lie to me?”

“No,” Joshua peeps. “They didn’t. It’s true.” The sound of Seokmin’s jaw dropping to the asphalt shakes every window in a six mile radius.

“Seriously? You really do like me?”

“Yes.”

“So why don’t you wanna go to the movies with me?”

“I do wanna go to the movies with you!”

“Then why didn’t you just say that?”

“I was confused!” Their voices escalate gradually until they’re both at a dull roar, and Seokmin lets Joshua’s most recent answer weigh on his ears before he chases the ringing silence away with another near-yell.

“What do you want to see?” he barks, and Joshua is falling into laughter before he can think of an answer, before he can remember what’s even playing now. He leans back on his palms when he does, laughs up at the sky and the stars and the clouds and anything else that might be listening, and Seokmin does the same, howling along beside him until they both fade back beneath the cicadas again. The trees circling the parking lot and gated confines of the pool buzz with life.

“We’re kind of stupid, I guess,” Joshua muses. Behind him on the ground, he feels a slim pinky finger curling around his own. Seokmin clears his throat.

“Probably.” He hums something under his breath, that obnoxious radio tune Soonyoung sang earlier. Here, under the moon and in the midst of a singing darkness, it’s so much more bearable than before. Joshua almost thinks he likes it.

“What do you like me for, anyway?” he asks against his better judgement. Seokmin ponders on it for a while, pinky tapping over Joshua’s knuckle.

“You’re nice,” he offers at last, and Joshua groans.

“Why does everybody think I’m just super nice?” he grumbles. “I have other qualities.”

“Because you are super nice.” Seokmin knocks into him with his shoulder, sets the world spinning off-kilter, a dizzy blur of pool water and concrete. “There are other reasons, too, but that’s just the first think that came to mind.” He rocks back and forth for a minute before asking, “What do you like me for?”

“You remind me of the sun,” Joshua tells him. A quick breath gets sucked in through Seokmin’s teeth, and he blows it out slowly through his nose, still tapping his finger.

“Wow,” he says, drained. “That was a way better answer and I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Joshua tells him, grinning, “but you have to pay for my movie ticket now.” `Seokmin chuckles at that, smooth and even, blending into the ambient noise of the dark. Joshua watches a mosquito float lazily by and land on his calf. He shakes it off.

“I was already going to pay for your ticket,” Seokmin confesses, pink at the ears. “Which reminds me.” He turns to Joshua with a grin broad as ever, eyebrows wiggling curiously. “What are we even gonna see?” The parking lot rattles with the sound of gentle laughter, shadows from the streetlamp crossing in all the wrong places. All around them, the cicadas still sing a lullaby to the moon.

Wonwoo strides in the next morning with a puffed up chest and a grin so wide and proud it makes Joshua’s blood pressure spike. He leans against the lockers just the same as he always does, one shoulder on the grate, legs crossed at the ankles, smugness in his eyes that says he knows too much. At least he’s consistent. “Morning, Josh,” he drawls, voice a grotesque mimicry of honey. “How about that gut feeling I had yesterday, hm? Was I right?”

Joshua levels his gaze at Wonwoo and sighs. He’s supposed to be so nice, yet he can’t bring himself to allow Wonwoo the satisfaction that comes with being right even when he was. In his periphery, he notices Seokmin walking in the door and gearing up for a pose, and that’s what reminds him that he has a date at the movies next Thursday and he doesn’t really care about much else—not about what Wonwoo thinks, and certainly not about being nice. He takes a step forward and gives Wonwoo a consolatory pat on the cheek that knocks his smile down a few notches. Seokmin is already snickering when he speaks.

“You’re teaching the babies today, jackass.” Wonwoo’s jaw still hangs limp and lifeless when he turns on his heel to walk out the door, and the sound of Seokmin cackling from inside the locker room is music to his ears. He can’t think of a better song to start his day.

**Author's Note:**

> this is so bad??? but seokshua chaotic gay standing was there and so i had to write seokshua. thank you for reading if you read and i appreciate it!! i hope u enjoyed this anyway somehow lmao. as always, feedback is greatly appreciated! have a good shiny day


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